This season we hope you’ll join us on our theatre trips as well as coming along to readings and a screening in the Cooper’s Loft at the Bristol Old Vic (ask at the bar on the first floor for directions). Everyone attending pays £1.

Tuesday, 24 April at 7.30pm: Open Workshop

Tuesday, 1 May at 7.30pm: Aeroplane Bones in the New Vic
A group visit to see Toby Farrow’s new play. Toby’s earlier success Gringos was given its first reading at a meeting of Southwest Scriptwriters.

Tuesday, 8 May at 7.30pm: Open Workshop

Tuesday, 15 May at *9.00pm*: Bacon Sandwich at the Alma Tavern
A group visit to see UWE’s full production of Tim Massey’s runner-up in last year’s competition.

Tuesday, 22 May at 7.30pm: Mother Me Daughter — the film
A screening in the Cooper’s Loft of Anne-Marie McCormack’s Western Lights winner starring Brenda Fricker, Paul McGann and our own Will Grealish. The film, which was written and directed by Anne-Marie, will be screened by HTV later in the year.

Tuesday, 29 May at 7.30pm: A Shortage of Sesame Seeds
Having found himself unable to write a decent tragedy last year, John Colborn turns his hand to comedy (of a sort). Tonight’s reading tells the story of how two reluctant business partners respond to their predicament.

New Honorary President

Lucy Catherine, our Honorary President for the past two years, has recently resigned as Writer-in-Residence at the Old Vic, and so feels she should also give up her Honorary Presidency of Southwest Scriptwriters. She now hopes to find more time to complete several commissions for radio drama from the BBC. We’d like to thank her for her support during her tenure, and are glad to hear that she’ll remain in touch with the group through her new (and less demanding) role as Literary Associate at the theatre.

In her place, we’re delighted to welcome Mike Bullen, writer of the ITV hit Cold Feet, as our new Honorary President. Many of you will already have met Mike at the talk he gave to the group in March last year — but if you missed that, he hopes to attend meetings as regularly as possible. Mike is one of the most successful television writers in the country — Cold Feet is even more profitable than Coronation Street because its nine-million-plus audience is a prime target for advertisers — and he’s currently working on the fourth series of the comedy drama for screening in the autumn.

Rob’s Ripley at the Rondo

Southwest Scriptwriter, Rob Houghton, is directing a stage version of The Talented Mr Ripley at the Rondo in Bath from Wednesday, 2 to Saturday, 5 May

Time’s tight for ‘life in the city’ treatments

Here’s a tight deadline — Friday, 20 April — but a chance to get a production with Granada Drama if you’ve got a one page idea for a 30-minute TV drama on the theme ‘life in the city’. You’ll also need to submit five pages of any script to demonstrate your love of dialogue and character. 20 semi-finalists will be paid £500 each to attend a workshop with one of four top Granada writers and to produce a ten-page treatment. From these 20 treatments, five will be selected for development into full scripts and these five writers will be paid another £3000 each.

Write now for November deadline

Following the success of our fourth season of New Writing in the New Vic, and thanks to last-minute funding from South West Arts, which made it all possible, we can now announce our fifth season — the competition for which has a deadline of 30 November this year. If all goes well, we hope for the first time to give the winning script a full production for one week at the Alma Tavern. The runners-up will all be given rehearsed readings in the New Vic, as this year (subject to confirmation that we can book these spaces). So start writing now. Your script can be for screen, stage, TV or radio and either one-act or full-length.

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